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News Highlights of the Day

Be sure to read our daily posting of News on secrecy and openness.

05/06/2013

OpenTheGovernment.org is a coalition of 80+ organizations united to make the federal government more open and accountable. We were formed in 2003 to help organize and amplify the voices of good- and limited- government groups, environmentalists, journalists, library and consumer groups, labor, and others who believe open government is essential to ensuring integrity and accountability in the operation of our governing institutions, fosters confidence in representative government, makes us safer, strengthens public trust in government, and supports our democratic principles.

05/06/2013

A Successful Fight for FOIA in the Farm Bill

Urgent action by the open government community yesterday helped keep FOIA-damaging amendments to the Farm Bill (S. 954) from reaching the floor. Senator Chuck Grassley’s nearly identical amendments 970, 1011, and 1097 would create a provision impeding the public’s right to know about the location of livestock operations, information that is important for public health and safety.

05/24/2013

Supreme Court Ruling Hurts Open Government - May 14, 2013 Newsletter

In This Issue:
News from Coalition Partners & Others
I. Supreme Court Ruling Hurts Open Government
II. Groups Recommend Changes FOIA Litigation Data Report

05/14/2013

An Unconscionable Intrusion

We recognize the necessity for the government to protect properly classified information and to ensure that information that would clearly cause harm to our national security is not incautiously released. However, the revelation today that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press is deeply disturbing. Seizing the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines exceeds anything that could be justified by any specific investigation of disclosures of classified information to the media.

05/13/2013

Public Information about Government Data Will Improve With New Obama Policy

The Obama Administration released an Executive Order and a Policy Directive today that move the federal government forward in a significant direction -- officially requiring that, going forward, data generated by the government be made available in open, machine-readable formats (with appropriate protections). Most notably, it requires that agencies create and maintain an “enterprise data inventory, if it does not already exist, that accounts for datasets used in the agency's information systems" -- with the ultimate goal of including all agency datasets, and with indications whether the agency has determined that the individual datasets may be made publicly available and whether these are currently available to the public.

05/09/2013

The FOIA Process and Common Problems

Our blog, Managing FOIA, has covered some of the many frustrations the public encounters when trying to use FOIA to get government records. We thought it might also be useful though, to take a more holistic look at the federal FOIA process, and some of the most common problems.

05/08/2013

Secrecy Check: Surveillance and the FISA Court

In 2012, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approved every single one of the federal government’s 1,856 applications made to it for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes.

05/03/2013

Improving the FOIA Reform Bill, HR 1211

As many of you may know, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently passed a bill authored by the Committee's Chair and Ranking Member, Representative Darrell Issa and Representative Elijah Cummings, to improve the federal government's system of processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

04/30/2013

A Deep Dive in the US' National Action Plan: Declassify National Security Information

In our final evaluation of the government's efforts to meet the open government commitments it included in the 2011 US National Action Plan, we characterized many of the steps the government promised to take as "small." Rather than taking bold measures to address pressing transparency issues, the Plan includes to make commitments that were less ambitious and more easily attained. The Administration's commitment related to declassification of historical documents is more accurately described as something less than a small step, however: the commitment -- to set up the National Declassification Center -- was something that the government had already completed well in advance of the release of the Plan. President Obama's Executive Order on Classified National Security Information, EO 13526, required the creation of the NDC at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The Center began operations in January 2010.

04/25/2013

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